Foul Tip Sirs: After gazing raptly from various angles, positions and distances at some of your reproductions of modern "Art" [TIME, May 23], am satisfied somebody is being kidded, and suspect I am it.
"Lower Manhattan, by John Marin, painted in 1920," may have met the 20th Century squarely, as you caption, but from here it looks like an awfully foul tip. Alice, on same page, might just as appropriately be rendered "Alice, Where Art Thou?" Does your Art Editor have his tongue in his cheek, or is he privately the plaything of similar inspirations ?
Hope you will continue to give us the titles along with the masterpieces, as otherwise some of the hidden beauties might elude us. F. BUCKLEY Hobbs, N. M.
Reproduction does injustice to Lower Manhattan and Alice and so does Reader Buckley.—ED.
Sirs: Has John Marin continued his art work since he has grown up? His Lower Manhattan of the 19205 shows only too well how hidden talent within a child can be discovered by giving him a paint brush and a box of water colors. JACK GAMBLE Pullman, Wash.
Artist Marin, now 67, retains a youthful spirit.—ED.
Soviet Machine
Sirs: In your story on Spain in TIME, April 18, you declare that ''however, it was now the fast growing Soviet Machine against the German-Italian Machine. . . ."
We know, according to official figures made public by Ambassador Fernando de los Rios, that between January i and March 19 of this year, the rebels received 84,672 Italian and German troops, making a total of more than 100,000 Italian troops and 50.000 German fighting against the Spanish people. Germany and Italy, moreover, frankly admit and even boast of their aid to Franco. But can you say that there are any Soviet soldiers fighting in Spain? None of the news correspondents with the Loyalists has ever reported that there is a single Soviet soldier fighting in the Loyalist ranks. The Loyalist air force, which enlisted Russian flyers in the early days of the war. is now practically 100% Spanish. There are several hundred Russian technicians in Spain, chiefly to service and repair equipment purchased from the Soviet Union. . . .
Thus TIME'S parallel does not exist. There is no ''Soviet Machine" in Spain comparable in any sense to the German-Italian machine. . .
ROBERTO RENDUELES Spanish Information Bureau New York City
By "Soviet Machine" TIME meant not men but materiel. Latest good guess about the number of Italians and Germans with Franco came last month from Foreign Policy Association's Charles A. Thomson in War in Spain. His estimate: 8,000-10,000 Germans; 40,000-80,000 or more Italians.—ED.
Why Scientists Remarry